Chemical heat pumps with integrated solar panels are disclosed in the published international patent application WO 2009/070090. In such chemical heat pumps unit tubes can be used, of which the basic construction also is disclosed in the published international patent application WO 2007/139476. Unity tubes are also used in the system which is disclosed in the published international patent application WO 2009/154537.
The principle for the chemical heat pump is well known, see for instance U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,440,889, 5,056,591, 4,993,239, 4,754,805 and the published international patent applications WO 94/21973, WO 00/31206, WO 00/37864 and WO 2005/054757. In a chemical heat pump there is an active substance, which performs process in the heat pump and which works together with a volatile medium, the absorbent, which is a dipolar liquid, in most cases water.
A chemical heat pump can as mentioned above comprise a unit tube. In such an embodiment the reactor part and evaporator-/condenser part of the heat pump are in the same completely sealed tube. Cooling and heating of such a heat pump is conducted by different parts of the walls and thereby through different wall parts of the sealed tube. Such a unit tube does not contain any moving parts and especially not any from the outside controllable valve and can be said to be an entirely passive device.
Solar panels in which solar energy is used for heating of a heat carrying medium, for instance water, are subject to huge stress, such as large and fast temperature variations, varying humidity and mechanical stress. It is of course of major economical interest to be able to design solar panels with high efficiency and high general usefulness for various applications. Solar panels in their simplest form comprise tubes for a heat carrying medium such as water, which tubes are placed so that they have parts which are heated by irradiation from the sun and thereby also the amount of heat carrying medium in those parts. The heated heat carrying medium is transported to places where it can be utilized, for instance for heating of a building or for use as hot tap water, or stored for later use.
In a chemical heat pump according to the above described published international patent application WO 2009/070090 with an integrated thermal solar panel, a part of the chemical heat pump is a thermal solar panel. An imperfection for such a thermal solar panel is that both the chemical heat pump and the thermal solar panel become a reduced field of use.
In the published U.S. Pat. No. 4,187,688 there is disclosed a chemical heat pump driven by solar energy. The heat pump comprises a number of connected units 100 placed next to each other, which each is made up of a tube. These tubes are themselves chemical heat pumps and comprise at one end a reactor part 102 and at the opposite end an evaporator/condenser part 104, se FIGS. 13 and 14. Exchange of heat between the reactor part for each tube unit and a transversal tube 116 is carried out by a heat exchange loop 123. In the tube units 100 there are thus passages into the tubes for the heat exchange loop and also passages for electrical wires. Moreover there is an electrically controlled valve 10 in each tube unit.